Richwoods girls edge Notre Dame 57-55

Monday

Feb 10, 2014 at 12:01 AMFeb 10, 2014 at 11:51 PM

Adam DuvallOf the Journal Star

PEORIA — Free throws, free throws and more Richwoods free throws.

The Knights used a pair of late Olivia Elger freebies to beat Notre Dame 57-55 in Mid-State 6 Conference girls basketball action on Monday night at The Kitchen. Richwoods (17-6, 6-0) finishes as the unbeaten champs in the final season of M-S 6 play.

Elger stepped to the line with the game tied at 55 and 15.1 second to play. The 5-foot-7 guard calmly knocked down the pair of free throws to give the game its 12th and final lead change.

“We know that they’re really important and that’s what’s going to help us win games and I think it just proved it tonight.”

Elger finished 11-for-20 from the field, while adding five assists and three steals for Richwoods. Her 37 points are a large-school season-high.

The Knights went 17-for-18 from the charity stripe for the game, which included an 11-for-11 display in the final eight minutes.

“I can’t complain about us being able to get to the free-throw line, put them down the stretch and do what we needed to do to finish in the fourth quarter,” Reardon said.

Notre Dame (11-14, 2-3), however, had one final chance to tie the game with 6 seconds remaining. Coming out of a timeout and the ball under their own basket, the Irish got the ball in, but Claire Goldhammer (nine points, six rebounds) picked up the loose ball as time expired.

“We were just going to take the best shot available to us off the inbounds play and turns out we didn’t get one,” ND coach Ron Carrothers said. “We had two options. One was to hit the post coming back in the middle and the second was to hit Bridget (Bill) in the corner.

“They did a pretty nice job of guarding it and we didn’t attack quite the way I thought we would.”

Goldhammer’s two free throws with 54.3 seconds left in the fourth pushed the Richwoods lead to 55-52. But the Irish tied the game when Katie Bill (12 points, three steals) found Maggie Maloof for a 3-pointer from the top of the key .

That set up the final moments of the game highlighted by Elger’s foul shots.

ND went into halftime up 29-21 thanks in part to its post play from seniors Caitlin Haisler and Matti Bielfeldt. The 5-foot-10 Haisler finished with a team-high 22 points, while the 6-foot Bielfeldt chipped in 10 points and seven rebounds.